It's Been a Long Time!

It's been ages since my last post, five months to be exact. So much has happened but it's almost all the same thing, just a different year.

A most beautiful puppy that went to live with a really nice family.

We have baby turkeys, a big garden, puppies, a new roof, and on and on. I take pictures almost everyday, wanting to post something but it all seems repetitive and boring to me.

Our new arbor.

We built the arbor to block the view of the road. We also built new steps that lead to the front door because we never had any and the people that had the house for 20 years before us never built any either. What were they thinking? Guests had to attempt to walk up the steep slope.

We are hoping that the grapes eventually cover the lattice.

The garden.



There are changes are worth noting though. This year we used black plastic on the garden. Man oh man, I feel liberated! No weeds at all. The only area I have to weed is along the bean and pea fence and that's actually fun. I can mow along the borders. Another thing worth noting is the fishing line that we have strung, at different heights, along and around the garden. You can kinda see it in the picture. It supposed to be a deer deterrent.



It's working so far. Yesterday while I was mowing, (And yes it was so hot that I was practically sliding off of the vinyl seat from sweat.) I saw that one of the lower pieces had been pulled way into the field by something that had gotten caught in it. It's only 20lb. test so it couldn't hurt an animal but we sure hoped it scared it.



I just went out this morning and picked way more cucumbers that I can use. Too large for pickles, they really snuck up on me. I think I'll make some freezer pickles, they are sooooo good, almost like candy.

The new roof.

We re-roofed the house last week, very hot and very humid but it needed to be done and it is!

So that's the update, maybe I'll be back a little sooner next time.

~Beth

Turkeys and Puppies and Snow and Snow and Snow and...

I bought my husband seat covers for Christmas. So, maybe around New Year's or maybe even later he decided to install them. The directions said to plan for 45 minutes and wear safety glasses so he didn't know what to expect!


They are from a company called Precision Fit Seat Covers and boy are they really heavy duty and nice! I picked a fabric called Endura (water proof.. read coffee stain proof) and a camo color .




So on a kinda warm day he and the boy went out to install them. I should go out now and take a close-up picture of them but it's 8am and freezing out and not worth it. And check out that you can see green grass in these pictures. We have not had green grass showing since that weekend. We have been slammed by snow storm after snow storm after snow storm. And throw in a couple of ice storms too.

Luckily they had the help of one of the turkey hens and got the job done easily and there were no safety glasses needed. What do they think will happen? A snap will smack your eye out? Really?

But I just cropped this last picture so you can see the seat cover a little better. It was actually kind of challenging shopping for the covers. The web sites are not all that user friendly. But I finally settled on this company and we are really glad that we did.

Speaking of snow! Poor Laddie has a snowy playground out there. See him watching me... always.

There he is with two of his daughters. They are almost as big as him. They were supposed to stay small, I hope they don't get too much bigger.

I still can't get him to come into the house. He loves it outside and is still so afraid of people. He will come to the door and lick my hand but if I try to pet him he is off. He is really excited to see me and really happy when I talk to him but he's not crazy about being touched. If I catch him and pet him he loves it though.

I did trick him one time and got him in, I threw a biscuit on the floor and he came in to get it and I shut the door behind him. He needed brushed and looked over so he got about a half an hour of me fretting over him.

He won't fall for that trick again. When he was in the house I had to put a diaper on him cause he just pees anywhere so maybe he was humiliated. (kidding) More like scared but when he was in here he was happy, trotting around. But he still would not come up to anyone. He is such a chicken. Actually, that's not entirely true, when I catch him and pet him for a while he will come up and let me pet him after I let him loose but it only lasts an hour or so.

Soooo, I decided that I wanted to try and take some portraits of the two puppies. I researched and read all about shutter speed and aperture settings and stuff like that and usually I can follow directions pretty good but my attempts were pathetic. I still have no idea how to use my camera besides point and shoot. All the other photo bloggers take beautiful shots but if I get a good one it's by accident.

It was frustrating but the results are below.

I put a sheet up and found a spot with natural light. She looks like she has a chicken neck here.

Bad angle but I did get a highlight in her eyes. Or I guess it's called a "gleam" or a "spark".

She's sitting like a frog and mind you, she didn't want to be up there on the table surrounded by cardboard with a sheet hanging off of it.

Now she's looking for her sister.

Now the other dogs are barking at something.

Now I want to smack her. (Just kidding, I would never smack her, she's my sweetie!)

But I kinda did want to.

OMG!

Better. But still chicken neck and bad angle.

Crap!

A little cuter but blurry.

Ugggggg!

She kept looking for her sister so I decided to put both up there, wow, look at the results and you know that when I pushed the button they were looking at me very cutely.

Sherpa, the one in front, looks like a bat. The one in the back is named Pink. She has the classically correct features of the Sheltie breed. Sherpa's ears are huge, I hope she grows into them but her personalty is amazing, the most loving puppy you've ever met.

She spends most of her time laying under my computer chair. (When I'm in it ) Pink is more stand offish, would rather be playing with her mom. Sherpa prefers people though, it's awesome. The best part of our day is when we come home to our dogs.

My husband insisted that they sleep with us. I waited until they had no accidents all night then up they came. They always go down by our feet to sleep though. My sister read that if they sleep up by your head that it means they are trying to dominate you, not these little guys. Even when we pet them try to hold them up close to us they won't stay. My sister wonders what it means that her Jack Russell trys to sleep on her head...

Very cute! I think the background should not have been light, her white collar does not show up very well.

Cropped it is cute but not in focus.

Pink looks cute but I have no idea where Sherpa thought she was going.

I cropped this to show only Pink but it's blurry... but she has that spark in her eye and it is cute.

All in all I learned that it is hard to take puppy pictures and I need to take a photography class! But I never want to go anywhere so that may be a problem! Maybe this spring or maybe there is some kind of on-line course. I'll keep taking pictures though, some good, many mostly bad but I will keep trying.

Til next time,

Beth